Network Design Principles

Contents
Design goals
Design choices
Design approaches
The design process
Capacity planning
Design goals
Good designs should:
Deliver services requested by users
Deliver acceptable throughput and response
times
Be within budget and maximise cost
efficiencies
Be reliable
Be expandable without major redesign
Be manageable by maintenance and
support staf
Be well documented
Design Choices
Balance of distribution
Level of transparency
Security
Connectivity technology
Design approaches
Two typical methods
Traditional analytic design
Building block approach
Both use a similar iterative
approach
The traditional design
process
Agree requirements

Information gathering

Design process

Meets constraints?

No Yes
Deployment

Commissioning

Modify
Design Stages - Agree Agree requirements

requirements Information gathering

Design process

Engage end users Meets constraints?

Translate requirements
No Yes
Deployment

Business objectives > technical

Commissioning
specification
Phasing the requirements Modify

Right level of detail at each design

stage
Designing the requirements
Design Stages - Designing
the requirements
Aim for completeness
Prioritise with a hierarchical Agree requirements

system such as Information gathering

[M] - Mandatory
[H] Highly desirable Design process

[D] - Desirable Meets constraints?

[N] - Note No Yes

Deployment

Commissioning

Modify
Design Stages - Assessing
requirements
Consider all aspects
E.g. support & maintenance, depreciation,
commissioning costs, project management
fees, h/w & s/w upgrade costs, b/w/ costs,
consultancy charges over the lifetime of
the network
Weighted matrix multipliers
M=100, H=10, D=1, N=0
Produce scores and rank suppliers
Design Stages - Information
gathering
Need to find details of user behaviour,
Agree requirements
application use and location information for
example: Information gathering
User: location, numbers, services used, typical access
Sites: number, location, constraints on traffic
Design process
(security, political or cost)
Servers and services: location, level of distribution
Meets constraints?
WAN/backbone predicted link traffic
No
Protocol support: bridged, routed or switched Gateways Yes
Deployment
needed?
Legacy support: equipment, protocols or services

Specific availability needs? 24-hour/backup links etc Commissioning

Five-year plan changes to population or business

requirements Modify
Budgetary constraints

Greenfield or existing site

Design Stages - Site
constraints
Greenfield or
Greenfield sites have no legacy constraints but
It is difficult to determine the real network loads Agree
and requirements
stresses
Needs more detail of application use and underlyingInformation gathering
protocols
Could use simulation to predict performance Design process
Existing site
Limited access Meets constraints?
Access to live network could be restricted but
No Yes
Bottlenecks more obvious Deployment
Can use traffic/network analysis tools
Commissioning

Modify
Design Stages - Planning
Uses information on Agree requirements

Hosts, users, services, and their Information gathering

internetworking needs
Iterative process of Design process

Conceptual design Meets constraints?

Analysis No Yes
Refinement Deployment

Involving Commissioning
Brainstorming, design reviews, modelling
tools Modify

Leading to final draft design

Design Stages - Design
specification
Detailed document of the design
Acts as a benchmark for design
Agree requirements
changes
Final design choices and changes Information gathering
need justification and documenting Design process
Should include change history to aid
Meets constraints?
maintenance No Yes
Used for the implementation Deployment

Commissioning

Modify
Design Stages - Agree requiremen

Implementation Information gather

Design process

Needs a project plan to include Meets constraints?

No
Phased introduction of new Deployment
Yes

technology
Educating the users (what to expect) Commissioning

Pilot installation (test for possible Modify

problems)
Acceptance testing (to prove
performance meets requirements)
Deployment (provide support on
going live and provide fallback
position)
Connectivity options
Technology choices
LANs (Ethernet, Token ring, ATM)
MANs (FDDI, SMDS, ATM, SONET/SDH)
WANS (Frame relay, ATM, ISDN, X.25,
PDCs, Satellite)
Wireless (802.11, Bluetooth, GPRS,
GSM)
Dial-up lines
Serial links
Connectivity option
determinants
Packet, cell or circuit switching
Wired or wireless
Distance
Performance
Bandwidth
Quality of Service
Availability
Media and bandwidth
choices
Capacity Planning -
Outline
Concerned with
User response times
Application behaviour and performance
characteristics
Network utilisation
Needed to
Minimise downtime
Maximise service to customers
Minimise costs of procurement and
maintenance
Avoid unscheduled maintenance or re-
design
Avoid costly upgrades and bad publicity
Capacity Planning - Stages
Form a discussion group (involve users
etc.)
Quantify user behaviour
Quantify Application behaviour
Baseline existing network
Traffic profiles
Make traffic projections
Summarize input data for design
process
Assess other data (environmental,
location restrictions, deployment
Capacity Planning Step 1
Form a discussion group (involve users etc.)
Needs wide representation
Users, network managers, application groups
To elicit
What uses find acceptable and unacceptable
Map of services and users and details of user
behaviour
Quantify items using
User and service sizing data
Snapshots from data capture and network
management tools
Traces of key services using protocol analysers
Pilot network implementation
Capacity Planning Step 2
Quantify user behaviour
Need to know population and and
location of users
Summary of major user groups
Application use by user group
Site location data (country, grid ref.,
town, postcode, telephone exchange)
Planned changes
Capacity Planning Step 3
Quantify Application behaviour
Need to identify
Applications that could afect performance
Location and performance of servers and clients
Key constraints on performance (response times, bufer
sizes etc
And define
Application behaviour under fault conditions (lost data)
Addressing mechanisms( broad/multi/unicast)
Packet characteristics (frame sizes and direction)
Routable and non-routable services (IP, NETBIOS)
Undefined applications allow choice of
distribution balance
Capacity Planning Step 4
Baseline existing network
Baselining a behavioural profile of the network
obtained from
Packet traces, transaction rates, event logs and stats
Router ACLs, firewall rulebases
Inventory of H/W and S/W revisions
Traffic profiles -Capture data for a stable working
network with details of
B/w utilization by packet type and protocol
Packet/frame size distribution
Background error rates
Collision rates
Various tools can be used
Network and protocol analysers, SNMP data, RMON
probes, OS tools, traceroute, ping etc
Capacity Planning Step 5
Make traffic projections using
some, or all of:
Hand calculation
Commercial analytical tools to project
network utilisation
Simulation tools (most detail)
Capacity Planning Step 6
Summarize input data for design
process
Budget
Database of sites, user populations,
List of key applications and their behaviour
Traffic matrix
Need to consider
Static or dynamic bandwidth allocation
Max. Delay and Max. hops between sites
Resilience, Availability, degree of meshing
Design constraints and trade-of
(e.g. delay v cost)
The building-block design
process
(an alternative)

Needs Technology
Analysis design

Cost
Assessment
Summary
Good design
Is an iterative process of continuous
refinement
Is logical and consistent
Should deliver acceptable
performance and cost metrics (trade-
of)
Is more than choosing the
technology!